1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for forming a pattern, a thin film transistor and a manufacturing method thereof, a display device and a manufacturing method thereof, and a television apparatus using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A thin film transistor (hereinafter, referred to as a “TFT”) and an electronic circuit using the thin film transistor are manufactured by stacking various types of thin films of such as a semiconductor, an insulator, a conductor over a substrate and then, appropriately forming a predetermined pattern by photolithography. The photolithography is a technique of transferring a pattern of a circuit or the like formed with a material which does not transmit light over a transparent flat surface, referred to as a photomask, onto an objective substrate by utilizing light. The technique has been widely used in the manufacturing processes of a semiconductor integrated circuit and the like.
In the manufacturing process employing a conventional photolithography technique, a multi-stage process including light exposure, development, baking, peeling, and the like are required only for treating a mask pattern which is formed of a photosensitive organic resin material referred to as a photoresist. Therefore, as the number of the photolithography steps is increased, the manufacturing cost is inevitably increased. In order to improve such problems as described above, it has been tried to manufacture a TFT by reducing the number of the photolithography steps (for example, Reference 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-251259).
However, in the technique disclosed in Reference 1, only some of the plural photolithography steps in a TFT manufacturing process are replaced by printing method, and no contribution is made to a drastic reduction in the number of steps. Further, a light exposure apparatus to be used for transferring a mask pattern in photolithography transfers a pattern of under several micrometers to one micrometer or less by equivalent projection light exposure or reduction projection light exposure. It is theoretically difficult, from a technical standpoint, to expose a large substrate which is more than one meter on a side to light all at once using the light exposure apparatus.